Five Years a Secret, Now I Deny We Ever Met Chapter 04

Five Years a Secret, Now I Deny We Ever Met Chapter 04

Professor Albright’s words were like a cold boomerang, circling endlessly in my mind.

During one of our thesis consultations, she had looked out at the carefree legacy students on the lawn and said pointedly, “Chloe, remember this. If a man never gives you a clear promise and never includes you in his public future, then it doesn’t matter which building at Auden bears his family name—he isn’t worth it. More importantly, if he doesn’t respect your career, then he doesn’t understand you at all.”

At the time, I had thought it was just ordinary academic advice.

Only now did I realize it had been the clearest warning an experienced woman could give a scholarship girl like me.

After that day, Sebastian and Isabella began preparing for their engagement party with an almost theatrical intimacy. They were inseparable on campus, choosing the venue, tasting cakes, as if the whole world should rejoice with them.

As for me, I buried myself in my thesis.

I thought if I just pretended not to see it, I could survive.

Until they showed up at my dorm room door.

“Chloe, we pinky-swore when we were little that we’d be each other’s maid of honor,” Isabella said, standing at the door and looking at me with that familiar, pleading expression. “Now that I’m getting engaged, I was hoping you’d stand beside me as my maid of honor. Will you?”

Her voice was soft, a blade wrapped in honey.

Sebastian stood behind her, giving me no chance to refuse.

“This is good for all three of us, Chloe,” he said in that commanding tone of his. “It will prove to everyone—especially those gossiping trustees—that our friendship is unbreakable. Nothing will quiet the rumors better.”

My gaze drifted past them to the antique wooden box in Isabella’s hands.

She noticed and immediately held it up excitedly. “Look! This is Sebastian’s engagement gift to me!”

She opened it.

Inside, a rare old book bound in dark brown leather lay on a bed of velvet. The gold-stamped Italian on the spine was unmistakable: Giorgio Vasari, *Lives of the Artists*, first edition, 1550.

My breath caught.

This… was my dream book.

Sebastian and I had tracked it for three years on a Sotheby’s auction site, like hunters stalking prey. We analyzed its provenance, studied the marginalia on every page. On countless late-night calls, Sebastian had pointed at the screen and said, “Chloe, this is our bible. Once we graduate, I’ll buy it. We’ll use it for our research, go to Florence, and walk every road Vasari walked.”

Now, “our bible” was his engagement gift to another woman.

“Chloe, if you don’t say anything, I’ll take that as a yes. Thank you so much!” Isabella gripped my hand, her excitement making me nauseous.

She leaned closer. The smile on her face was no longer innocent. It held a precise, cruel threat.

“You know, the entire Auden board of trustees and the heads of all the major academic committees will be at the party. I’m sure they’re all hoping for a dignified evening. That’s what you want too, right, Chloe?”

She knew me too well. She was certain I would never gamble away the academic future I had fought so hard for over a private grievance.

I slowly withdrew my hand and put on a flawless social smile.

“Of course,” I said, my voice as calm as still water. “You have my sincerest blessings.”

Sebastian’s attention seemed to be elsewhere. He glanced around my desk, and his gaze froze.

The photo that had once occupied the most prominent spot—a picture of the two of us at an academic conference—had been replaced by a landscape of Florence.

Before leaving, he looked at me and sighed, his tone self-righteous and indulgent.

“Isabella’s words may have been blunt, but she meant well. Don’t get stuck in your own head.” He paused, then lowered his voice as if sharing a secret. “Just think of this party as a… dress rehearsal for how we’ll handle family politics in the future.”

I almost laughed out loud at his baffling logic.

What made him think I would still be waiting around like a fool?

And what made him think Chloe Jones would ever pick up something someone else had discarded, something covered in lies and betrayal?

Time passed in a blur of work and numbness.

Soon, it was the day of their engagement party at the family estate.

Sebastian and Isabella stood beneath an elaborate wall of flowers, accepting congratulations from the guests, their eyes constantly darting toward me. They seemed terrified I would suddenly lose control and make a scene, playing the part of the scorned scholarship girl at a high-society party.

But they were disappointed.

The entire time, I wore the dress they’d chosen for the “maid of honor,” kept a pleasant smile fixed on my face, and even calmly dealt with several of Isabella’s drunk relatives.

Seeing my performance, they visibly relaxed.

Until the emcee announced that the engaged couple should come to the stage to receive everyone’s blessings.

A wildly inappropriate voice, burning with anger, suddenly cut through the room from the banquet hall doors.

“Sebastian! You hypocrite! Didn’t you tell the board that Chloe was the most talented scholar you’d ever met? That she was your soulmate?”

The man strode closer, his voice echoing under the crystal chandeliers, striking every eardrum.

“And now you marry someone else for a business deal and make her stand here like an idiot as your ‘maid of honor.’ Are you out of your mind? Are you trying to humiliate her?”